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This week I have been focussing on preparing for our upcoming twitter campaign #Ballast30! As this monthly favourite is also focussing on #Ballast30, I thought I would combine them both as I have spent this month planning the start of our 30th anniversary celebrations.

I have also started box listing material from Clyde Navigation Trust and Clyde Port Authority, this is a large collection of volumes, drawings and other material which will then be catalogued before going to Glasgow City Archives.

Beginning 1st June, we will be kick starting our celebrations with #Ballast30 where we will be sharing facts on twitter all about the Ballast throughout the month!

Taking inspiration from the Archives and Records Association #Archive30 and #Museum30, the idea behind this is to give one fact every day about the Trust throughout June; from our favourite quote, getting to know our Ballast dog Gypsy, to understanding our role within the Archives sector. Through this we hope it will raise awareness of what we do at the Trust and provide the opportunity to get to know us better and find out some interesting facts!

This week's photo is from Bill's extensive postcard and photograph collection. This postcard is of paddle steamer 'Waverley' sailing around Lundy island on one of her voyages during the summer months!

As the weather today is lovely and sunny, this image seemed like an appropriate choice! Photo credit to Ian Muir. Coincidentally we have some of Ian Muir's slides at the Ballast Trust which are in the process of being listed and homes sought for them.

In late 2017 the Ballast Trust secured funding from Renfrewshire Council to establish a 6 month graduate trainee role as an Archives Assistant. I was appointed in January and have now been with the Ballast Trust for just over 2 months so it seems like an appropriate time to say hello and begin to update on some of the projects and tasks I have been getting up to!

So far I have been working through box listing Rankin Shipbuilding material. In these two boxes I found over 200 negatives and glass negatives which I then began to scan using a flatbed scanner. Through this process I have gained a more secured understanding in handling both negatives and glass plate negatives and the process of setting up the scanner. These negatives corresponded to a book which detailed what the image was. From this we discovered the negatives were images of repair work which had been carried out in yard.

I have also started regularly writing for our blog with monthly favourites and weekly ‘Friday photo’ posts, alongside content on women working in industry, with focus on female tracers who worked in both engineering firms and in later years the ship yards. As 2018 is the Year of Young People, this weekly series on the blog is a welcomed addition and will hopefully give readers an insight into the work carried out at the Trust and my role as a trainee. I'll also be updating our twitter under the #BallastTrainee hashtag.

This year also marks 30 years since the beginning of the Trust's operations in 1988 and as part of our 30th anniversary celebrations we will be carrying out a twitter campaign #Ballast30 where every day we will be sharing facts on the Trust from our favourite Bill Lind quote to a typical day at the Trust! Keep an eye out for this starting 1st June!

My initial inspiration to write a blog post focusing on 'Women at Work’ came after conversations with colleagues on females working in the shipyards and in engineering firms which led me to find out more about the role of female tracers. The image above is of the tracing department at Fairfield’s Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan c.1909.

Female tracers worked in the drawing offices and traced over the drawings made by draftsmen to make the final original design. The need for tracers is often put down to the increased demand for engineers, however it was mainly down to the fact that women were able to trace over these plans with care and precision, it took great skill to be able to become a tracer.
To become a tracer, you would have to complete an apprenticeship in a tracing office. The length of these apprenticeships seems to vary between companies but range from nine months to five years. The tracing offices were made up of female employees who were very much kept separate from their male colleagues or draftsmen.

The above image shows the drawing office where draftsmen would have completed their plans before sending them though to the tracers. Despite men and women being kept separate both workrooms are similar in layout and there aesthetic. This image was also taken at Fairfield’s Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Govan c.1909.

I was fortunate enough to be put in contact with Ann Wilson who had previously completed a nine-month apprenticeship with Loudon’s engineering shop in Paisley and had then gone on to work with the G.P.O (general post office) for 29 years as a tracer. In this blog I have recounted her time spent as an apprentice and then as a tracer to give more information on the job and what was involved.

Tracers worked solely with ink and linen cloth. Once the cloth had been stretched using four pins, chalk was rubbed into the warp and weft of the linen and left overnight. In the morning the plan drawn by the draughtsman would be slid under the cloth and then weighted. In shipbuilding, plans came in two different sizes; 32” and 46”. Tracers would sometimes work together to complete a drawing if necessary.

The use of linen, as Ann recalls, was a difficult material to work with. Using chalk before applying the ink would provide a surface texture making it easier to apply. The tools used were also the same tools used by draftsmen. If too much ink was placed into the pen it would run onto the linen and spoil the drawing. However, the time it took for the ink to dry would have been minutes as it was applied finely onto the linen. The boards used were tilted at an angle towards the tracer, an office could have up to twenty tracers working in the offices at one time. These boards could be adjusted and set flat depending on the need of the tracer. Set-squares, straight edges and curves were all crucial parts of the tracer’s toolkit, often straight lines were drawn first with corners added in afterwards.

We were also fortunate to find some tracers tools which had belonged to Duncan Winning. These would have been used by both draftsmen and tracers.

One of the most useful resources at The Trust is a folder compiled by Duncan for the National Records of Scotland which documents the different types of materials that would have been used for plans. This folder is an invaluable resource when cataloging large rolls of plans made up of different types of material, for example; plastic, cartridge, paper and linen. The image below shows a paper drawing from Ferguson Brothers Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow next to a set of tools that a tracer would have used to draw a similar plan.

Not every plan was simply a straightforward copy, at times tracers were required to add in adjustments or alterations, this included making one drawing from multiple plans; each dependant on what the individual order demanded. Many drawings required different levels of detail which the tracer would build upon until the full drawing was completed.

Thanks to Ann Wilson and Craig Osborne our volunteer for sharing their knowledge on the work of female tracers.

This week's photo is of Albert Harbour in Greenock. Particularly interesting as you can see the Greenock Town hall in the distance. The foundations for the harbour were laid in 1862, replacing the earlier Albert Quay.

The Lind Collection held at the Trust also holds an image of Countess of Breadalbane & Talisman which was photographed in Albert Harbour, May 1967. You can view this image here on our Flickr account.

As the new Graduate Trainee, I've been tasked with carrying out some social media related activities as part of my role and for the blog I've decided to resurrect the regular Friday Photo slot.

Bill Lind was a ship enthusiast and built up a large personal collection of plans, photographs, and postcards. This week’s photo is of tanker ‘Stolt Norness’ built by Boelwerf (c.1970) in Temse, Belgium. This image comes from Bill’s personal postcard collection, an important and invaluable resource for us when answering enquiries and carrying out research into ships. She was sold in 1977 and again in 1982 and renamed ‘Turpial.’

About

The Ballast Trust is a charitable foundation established in 1988 that provides a rescue, sorting and cataloguing service for business archives with an emphasis on technical records such as shipbuilding, railway and engineering plans, drawings and photographs.